RICHMOND: Bristol County DA Sam Sutter considers run for attorney general

Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter is a busy man and Martha Coakley isn’t making his days any easier. With Coakley’s announcement Monday that she will run for governor, Sutter, a Fall River resident and Democrat, has cast his eyes on the attorney general’s office. He said Tue...

Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter is a busy man and Martha Coakley isn’t making his days any easier.

With Coakley’s announcement Monday that she will run for governor, Sutter, a Fall River resident and Democrat, has cast his eyes on the attorney general’s office. He said Tuesday he has established a 30-day timetable for making his decision. The alternative, if Boston isn’t in his plans for 2014, is a campaign for a third term as district attorney.

Should he decide to run for attorney general, Sutter said he expects to be among the first to do so, if not the first. Getting an early jump on the field is a lesson he said he learned through experience. By jumping into the district attorney fray early in 2006, he said it gave him an advantage against then-incumbent Paul Walsh. Waiting two months to announce his candidacy for Congress, Sutter said it put him well behind eventual winner Bill Keating, especially after then spending the first two months trying to ensure Keating wasn’t gaining any traction in Sutter’s Bristol County home base.

“I will be one of the first to announce, if not the first one in,” Sutter said.

It’s a decision Sutter said he wasn’t exactly prepared to make, saying that a conversation with Coakley back in May had him thinking a third term as attorney general was in her plans.

Moving forward four months, and thanks to the murder and gun charges lodged against former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, Sutter knows his profile is much higher than it was during his 2012 race against Keating, as he ticks off various trips outside of the county in which he’s been approached by those watching the Hernandez proceedings on television.

That Sutter is contemplating a run for attorney general should come as no surprise. He has often, and again on Tuesday, reiterated his desire to hold higher office, and he considers attorney general a “natural progression.”

He adds that his work in Bristol County will also lend itself well to the statewide office, pointing to his efforts to improve cooperation between his office and police departments, as well as mayors in the county. He noted his office’s investigative work — mentioning the report into the death of Marie Joseph in the Veterans Memorial Pool in 2011 — and improved solve rates in non-fatal shootings. He points to five wiretap investigations that he deems “extremely successful” as further evidence of his innovative work, adding that no such investigations were used in the 16 years leading up to his first election.

As Sutter contemplates his future, a run for attorney general will come with plenty of obstacles, and Sutter is aware of them.

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According to his research, a statewide office hasn’t been held by a SouthCoast resident since 1937 when Joseph Hurley of Fall River was lieutenant governor. He also has a 10-year-old daughter and knows how time consuming a statewide campaign will be. And of course there is the potential competition, which could reportedly include Secretary of State William Galvin, though Sutter said the field will not be a factor in his decision. There is also the possibility that party leaders will unofficially anoint a candidate as the favorite, an issue Sutter faced at times during his Congressional run.

But Sutter is also aware that certain circumstances also appear to be lining up in his favor.

Former Middlesex County District Attorney Gerald Leone doesn’t appear to be a candidate after resigning earlier in the year to go into private practice. The Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley is currently running for mayor in Boston and a number of other potential Boston-area candidates are involved in the special election to replace Ed Markey in Congress, making the turnaround to another campaign difficult. The Middlesex domino is especially important considering the last three attorney generals came from that office and Sutter looks at it as a county with strong Democratic support.

“I wouldn’t be straightforward if I say I hadn’t noticed,” Sutter said of the stars appearing to align.

Will Richmond is the news editor at The Herald News. You can read his take on politics in the Politi-Beat blog on heraldnews.com.